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“Our mission is to create meaningful careers for disabled people.”
Walk us through your background and what brought you to your current field
In my late teens, I danced my way into a prestigious London academy. I wanted to become a professional dancer and musical theatre performer. But one day, I woke up in tremendous pain. I saw doctors, they kept dismissing my symptoms as stress or an eating disorder. Before long, I was hospitalized and eventually given the right tests then, after many surgeries, I was able to eat again. Today, I live with chronic illness, chronic pain and a permanent ileostomy. I also live with the PTSD caused by the medical trauma I endured.
When I was well enough to leave the hospital, I took a trip to Los Angeles for a fresh start and to try and find a road back into the creative industry. But soon after, I lost a job due to ableism.These experiences drove me to start representing disabled talent, placing them in roles in Hollywood. That quickly grew into a full-fledged talent agency called C Talent.
At C Talent, our goal was to change the way the world sees disability through the power of entertainment and media. We placed disabled artists in roles with HBO’s The Last of Us, the Hunger Games prequel, and major brands like Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty, Disney, and Amazon. The talent we represented had a combined reach of over 50 million people. In 2022, C Talent was acquired, marking a major milestone for the creative industries and disabled community.
After selling my first company I founded Making Space, a talent acquisition and learning platform for companies to train, access and retain pre-qualified disabled talent. At Making Space we are building new pathways to employment by putting employer endorsed education at the frontend of the hiring process, which leads to better outcomes for both employers and job-seekers. Additionally, we are using the power of storytelling to shift the narrative. Sophie Morgan and I have also formed Making Space Media and under a first look deal with Reese Witherspoon, Hello Sunshine is telling the untold stories of disabled people
Tell us a bit about Making Space. What inspired its creation and how does it help people living with disabilities?
Since the acquisition, I founded Making Space, a talent acquisition and learning platform for companies to train, access and retain pre-qualified Disabled talent. While we still have a focus on the creative industries, this solution is industry agnostic. Our mission is to create meaningful careers for disabled people and provide the necessary resources for them to become influential leaders.
Our platform bridges the education-employment gap by offering accessible, job-specific training and putting skill-based education as part of the hiring process. We collaborate with companies, creating courses that enable disabled candidates to gain skills and a competitive advantage that align directly with a company’s needs. This approach creates a pipeline of prequalified candidates, democratized free & accessible education, presenting an opportunity to learn new skills, get to know more about the employer and create new pathways to employment. In addition, this provides better outcomes for the employer, helping them find higher quality hires at a faster rate and increase their retention rate. A win-win solution.
What is the core mission and vision of Making Space?
Our mission has always been to make space for disabled talent. We are committed to dismantling barriers and creating pathways to success through skill development, meaningful connections and opportunities for continual growth. By addressing and overcoming systemic challenges, we pave the way for sustained advancement and achievement.
What is the main goal of Making Space and what drives your team to pursue this goal?
Lived experience of disability drives our team and we hope to change the statistic that disabled people are 2x more likely to be unemployed than non-disabled people.
Can you share any success stories?
We have recently seen great success working with NBC Sports, a partnership working to increase the employment of disabled people both in front and behind the camera. Making Space and NBC Sports created free and accessible education developing a pre-trained talent pipeline from the disabled community, allowing NBC to access an untapped and under-represented workforce, paving the way for a historic increase in disability representation at one of the world’s most recognizable media companies.
Talent from the pipeline were heavily featured in NBC Sports’ groundbreaking coverage of the Paris Olympics and Paralympics. In addition, those in the hosting roles were the first-ever disabled hosts in NBCs history of the Paralympic coverage.
What changes do you anticipate in the employment market, and how is Making Space preparing to lead these changes?
The Bureau Labor of Statistics recently released the most sought-after skills and how relevant they are for current and future jobs by employers in the U.S. The majority are skills that disabled people have naturally.
Making Space has developed “Making Space AI,” a tool embedded within a candidate’s Making Space profile that turns the lived experience of disability into transferable skills, positioning what has traditionally been seen as weakness into a competitive advantage.
What are some of the crucial partnerships contributing along Making Space’s journey?
We are proud to have partnerships with Netflix, NBC, Amazon, WGU and Indeed among others. Outside of our enterprise partnerships, we have community partnerships with organizations and other disability-owned companies which is incredibly important and we welcome anyone who is interested to get in touch with us.
Are there any upcoming projects we should look out for?
Making Space and Indeed will soon be releasing a course that is tied to many job openings for AI Prompt Engineering and another for Sustainability related roles. Be sure to sign up to Making Space for the latest updates!
What message can you share about the importance of inclusivity and the unifying power of community?
We must dismantle the intangible walls of prejudice and bias…We must reform systems like the restrictive asset and income limits tied to disability benefits that penalize Disabled people for working or saving too much. We must normalize disabled people being experts in subjects beyond just disability. We must recognize that disability intersects with all other aspects of identity. We must take a dynamic and nuanced approach to advancing the rights and opportunities of disabled people.